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The struggle for social and economic
equality of Black people in America has been long and slow. It is
sometimes amazing that any progress has been made in the racial
equality arena at all; every tentative step forward seems to be
diluted by losses elsewhere. For every “Stacey Koons” that is
convicted, there seems to be a Texaco executive waiting to send
Blacks back to the past.

Throughout the
struggle for equal rights, there have been courageous Black leaders
at the forefront of each discrete movement. From early activists such
as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois, to
1960s civil rights leaders and radicals such as Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers, the progress that has been made
toward full equality has resulted from the visionary leadership of
these brave individuals.

This does not
imply, however, that there has ever been widespread agreement within
the Black community on strategy or that the actions of prominent
Black leaders have met with strong support from those who would
benefit from these actions. This report will examine the influence of
two “early era” Black activists: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B.
DuBois. Through an analysis of the ideological differences between
these two men, the writer will argue that, although they disagreed
over the direction of the struggle for equality, the differences
between these two men actually enhanced the status of Black Americans
in the struggle for racial equality. We will look specifically at the
events leading to and surrounding the “Atlanta Compromise” in
1895.

In order to
understand the differences in the philosophies of Washington and
Dubois, it is useful to know something about their backgrounds.
Booker T. Washington, born a slave in 1856 in Franklin County,
Virginia, could be described as a pragmatist. He was only able to
attend school three months out of the year, with the remaining nine
months spent working in coal mines. He developed the idea of Blacks
becoming skilled tradesmen as a useful stepping-stone toward respect
by the white majority and eventual full equality.

Washington
worked his way through Hampton Institute and helped found the
Tuskeegee Institute, a trade school for blacks. His essential
strategy for the advancement of American Blacks was for them to
achieve enhanced status as skilled tradesmen for the present, then
using this status as a platform from which to reach for full equality
later. Significantly, he argued for submission to the white majority
so as not to offend the power elite. Though he preached appeasement
and a “hands off” attitude toward politics, Washington has been
accused of wielding imperious power over “his people” and of
consorting with the white elite.

William Edward
Burghardt DuBois, on the other hand, was more of an idealist. DuBois
was born in Massachusetts in 1868, just after the end of the Civil
War and the official end of slavery. A gifted scholar, formal
education played a much greater role in DuBois’s life than it did
in Washington’s. After becoming a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk
and Harvard, he was the first Black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard in
1895.

DuBois wrote
over 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles on the historical
and sociological nature of the Black experience. He argued that an
educated Black elite should lead Blacks to liberation by advancing a
philosophical and intellectual offensive against racial
discrimination. DuBois forwarded the argument that “The Negro
problem was not and could not be kept distinct from other reform
movements. . .”

DuBois “favored
immediate social and political integration and the higher education
of a Talented Tenth of the black population. His main interest was in
the education of ?the group leader, the man who sets the ideas of the
community where he lives. . .’” To this end, he organized the
“Niagara movement,” a meeting of 29 Black business and
professional men, which led to the formation of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The crux of the
struggle for the ideological center of the racial equality movement
is perhaps best exemplified in Mr. DuBois’s influential The Souls
of Black Folk. In it, he makes an impassioned argument for his vision
of an educated Black elite.

DuBois also
describes his opposition to Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta
Compromise” as follows: “Mr. Washington represents in Negro
thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission…” According
to DuBois, Washington broke the mold set by his predecessors: “Here,
led by Remond, Nell, Wells- Brown, and Douglass, a new period of
self-assertion and self- development dawned…. But Booker T.
Washington arose as essentially the leader not of one race but of
two–a compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro.”

DuBois reported
that Blacks “resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise which
surrendered their civil and political rights, even though this was to
be exchanged for larger chances of economic development.”

DuBois’s point
and, according to him, the collective opinion of the majority of the
Black community, was that self- respect was more important than any
potential future economic benefits. Before Washington’s
conciliatory stance gained a foothold, “the assertion of the
manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance.” In
other words, DuBois resented what he saw as Washington “selling”
Black pride: “…Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an
economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent
as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of
life.”

The compromise
included, in DuBois’s words, “that black people give up, at least
for the present, three things,– “First, political power, Second,
insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro
youth,–and concentrate all their energies on industrial education,
the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.”

The final point
comprised the centerpiece both of Washington’s strategy for the
ultimate redemption of Black Americans and of DuBois’s condemnation
of that strategy. Indeed, Washington backed up his assertions by
founding the Tuskeegee Institute as a trade school for young Black
men.

DuBois could not
abide this type of appeasement. In his mind, this step was tantamount
to the Black community telling the white community that, henceforth,
Blacks would cease pretending to be equal to whites as human beings;
rather, they would accept an overtly inferior social status as being
worthy of maintaining the white majority’s physical world, but
unworthy of true equality, of conducting socio-cultural discourse
with the mainstream society.

The paradox must
have been maddening for both men, especially Mr. Washington. He no
doubt understood that, as a group, Blacks could never hope to
progress to the point of equality from their position of abject
poverty. Moreover, without skills, their hopes of escaping their
economic inferiority were indeed scant. Washington’s plan for
blacks to at least become skilled artisans and tradesmen must have
seemed logical to him from the standpoint of improving the economic
lot of the average Black man. At the same time, he must have realized
that, by accepting inferiority as a de- facto condition for the
entire race, he may have broken the black spirit forever.

In considering
this matter, the writer is reminded of more recent events in American
history–the affirmative action flap that occurred after Clarence
Thomas’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, for example. Mr.
Thomas, clearly a beneficiary of affirmative action, announced that
he was nonetheless opposed to it. His argument was that if he had not
been eligible for benefits under affirmative action programs, he
would have still achieved his current position in the inner circle of
this society’s white power elite.

Similarly,
Booker T. Washington enjoyed access to the power elite of his time,
but one must wonder whether President Roosevelt, for example, in his
interactions with Mr. Washington, was not merely using the situation
for public relations value. “[Mr. Washington] was ?intimate’ with
Roosevelt from 1901 to 1908. On the day Roosevelt took office, he
invited Washington to the White House to advise him on political
appointments of Negroes in the south.” After all, he did not become
a popular president by being oblivious to such political maneuvering.

Perhaps Mr.
DuBois was the more prescient visionary. Perhaps he understood what
Mr. Washington did not, that after the critical historical momentum
toward social acceptance that had been established prior to the late
nineteenth century, if political pressure were not maintained, the
cause of true equality would be lost forever. Moreover, DuBois
understood that equality would not be earned through appeasement.

From our
perspective of over 100 years, we must admit that he may have been
right. For example, in the aftermath of the “Atlanta Massacre” of
September 22, 1906 and a similar incident in Springfield, Illinois,
“it was clear to almost all the players that the tide was running
strongly in favor of protest and militancy.” “For six days in
August, 1908, a white mob, made up, the press said, of many of the
town’s ?best citizens,’ surged through the streets of
Springfield, Illinois, killing and wounding scores of Blacks and
driving hundreds from the city.”

However, it
later turned out that DuBois was considered to be too extreme in the
other direction. For example, as the NAACP became more mainstream, it
became increasingly conservative, and this did not please DuBois, who
left the organization in 1934. He returned later but was eventually
shunned by Black leadership both inside and outside of the NAACP,
especially after he voiced admiration for the USSR. In the political
climate of the late 1940s and 1950s, any hint of a pro-communist
attitude–black or white–was unwelcome in any group with a
national political agenda.

We can see,
then, that neither Washington’s strategy of appeasement nor
DuBois’s plan for an elite Black intelligentsia was to become
wholly successful in elevating American Blacks to a position of
equality. However, perhaps it was more than the leadership of any one
Black man that encouraged African Americans to demand a full measure
of social and economic equality. Perhaps the fact that there was a
public dialogue in itself did more to encourage Black equality than
the philosophy of any one prominent Black man. After all, concepts
such as equality are exactly that: concepts. As such, it up to each
of us to decide how we see ourselves in relation to others; superior
or inferior, equal or not equal, the choice is ultimately our own.

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